Reports & Publications
Reports, publications and other resources produced by the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group.
Our Spring Newsletter is here!
We introduce new research and a new Best Practice Guide for working with interpreters. You'll hear from volunteers about visiting on the frontline, about our recipe book coming soon and much more besides...
Experiences of Facing Deportation
With the introduction of the 2007 UK Borders Act, anyone without British citizenship who receives a prison sentence of 12 months or more is subject to automatic deportation proceedings. Around 5,000 people a year are removed from the UK following contact with the criminal justice system; and this group makes up a large proportion of people in immigration detention. In collaboration with GDWG, Lauren Cape-Davenhill from the University of Leeds has undertaken research around people’s experiences of deportation proceedings, speaking with 24 people with experience of facing deportation after contact with the criminal justice system, and Key Informants including detention visitor group staff and immigration and public law solicitors.
To read Lauren Cape-Davenhill’s research findings, click the button below.
Our Winter Newsletter is out!
As we near the end of the year, we thank our staff, volunteers and everyone who has made our frontline work and also our thirtieth birthday year 30 Windows events possible. Click the link below to read the full newsletter.
Spring Newsletter
In our Spring Newsletter you will read about our hopes for our new research into use of interpreters, our hopes for our new EDI working group, you will meet our new Chair of Trustees and staff who are leading Refugee Tales and our post-detention work. You'll find joyful memories from time spent as guests of the Landmark Trust and as nominees at the Sheila McKechnie awards. Read about how it is to start out as a new visitor and find out what 30 Windows mean to us! We hope there is much to inspire you in this newsletter reflecting on our work in our thirtieth birthday year.
Annual Review 2023
Our Annual Review for 2023 'Building Community' is out. Our Director writes: 'As we enter our 30th birthday year, our charity reaches beyond the locality of the detention centres where our volunteers visit, and yet visits and the people we visit remain at the heart of everything we do.' In her first year as Chair of GDWG, Laura Moffatt pays tribute to volunteer visitors: 'I am determined to continue to be a volunteer visitor to constantly remind myself why this charity exists.'
In 2023 we welcomed the findings of the Brook House Public Inquiry with the GDWG Self-Advocacy Group central in our public responses and our Walking Inquiry multi-media exhibition took our call for change around the UK. The year in numbers conveys increasing need: we helped 2,306 people in detention, we gave out 2,661 mobile top-ups, provided 1,091 packs of clothes and carried out casework for 902 detained people. Thanks to our inspiring community for an intense year of dedicated work.
Annual Review 2022
The Right to Community Equivalent Healthcare in Immigration Removal Centres: A Public Law Analysis of Systemic Issues in the Inspection Regime
This report asks whether there are systemic elements of the CQC inspection scheme in IRCs which inhibit its ability to apply the community equivalence principle.
GDWG Factsheet on the New Plan for Immigration
In this document we summarise some of the key points from the proposals, highlight some areas that particularly relate to our work.
Don’t Dump Me In a Foreign Land
Published in November 2017 and written by Dan Godshaw, this report looks at those who arrive in the UK as children and go on to be detained. We have recommendations for government, local authorities, and support services.
Newsletter archives
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This newsletter is written the week after a man died in detention in London. When we know the identity of the person who died we shall remember his name. In the Public Inquiry into the mistreatment of individuals detained at Brook House in 2017, the harms experienced…
If you are a child migrant arriving in the UK in the months ahead, if you are a victim of modern slavery or someone who has been trafficked to the UK and you reach our shores, your future in the UK will be bleak whatever your reason for seeking safety.
Winter
In the newsletter you will read about GDWG drop-in sessions in the Centres and news of the Brook House Public Inquiry Report. You'll find book reviews and stories of the ways we come together through exhibitions, meetings, walking, training, planning, visits to detention and the detention centre visits room and even, in this edition, through boxing!
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GDWG submission to Stephen Shaw review
On 24th July 2018 the follow-up report by Stephen Shaw, ‘Assessment of government progress in implementing the report on the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons’ was published. During 2017 GDWG carried out an extensive piece of research with detainees to ascertain what progress had been made since his 2016 report ‘Review into the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons’. The evidence for our research was obtained from G4S medical records and detainees’ Home Office files. The research findings formed GDWG’s submissions to this review.
Rethinking ‘Vulnerability’ in Detention: a Crisis of Harm
Published in July 2015, this report by the Detention Forum’s Vulnerable People Working Group was co-written by GDWG and AVID.
Cutting Justice
Published in May 2015, this report describes the impact of legal aid cuts on people detained in Brook House and Tinsley House IRCs.
A Prison in the mind
This 2012 GDWG report looks at the mental health implications of detention in Brook House IRC.
